


Dear Little Stranger(s)

by thundercracker



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Tres Horny Girls, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-25
Updated: 2017-09-25
Packaged: 2019-01-05 07:10:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12185319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thundercracker/pseuds/thundercracker
Summary: After Hecuba is briefly enthralled by the Gaia Sash, Lucretia is forced to concur that the three need more help. Things go well until they don't. Hecuba fails her Wisdom Save. Lucretia tags along. Julia knocks some people out. Lup remembers.





	Dear Little Stranger(s)

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry this isn't up to the standards of what I normally write. I'm in a really bad writer's block and more depressed than usual somehow, but I wanted to write out some ideas.
> 
> It's named after a song by hymnwriter Charles H. Gabriel, since apparently I'm sticking with that naming scheme because I hate writing titles?

“I’m only—I’m just worried about the thrall,” Lucretia had sighed during their post-Goldcliff debriefing. Hecuba hadn’t so much as glanced at her since the three adventurers entered the Director’s office, instead sulkily staring at her own wrinkled palms and replaying her mistakes in her mind.

She was a Reclaimer, for Berronar’s sake, the thrall shouldn’t be a problem for her. _Lup_ had been able to handle the past two relics on her own—granted, she was smart enough to always wrap them up instead of ever touching them directly. _Lup_ was cut out for this job.

 _Hecuba_ , however, wasn’t strong-willed or clever or anything particularly special. She was a mother and a healer and she knew what it was like to be a lesbian and lose someone you loved, and when the belt had whispered, in a sickly-sweet tone that intimated a desperate need to be used, “ _You can still save them_ ,” Hecuba felt her will to resist melting away.

_(Sloane had laughed later, equal parts awkward in her newly wooden body and unsure how to interact with someone she’s nearly killed, “I kind of was planning something along the same lines, so that wasn't really necessary? But thank you.”)_

Julia had needed to knock her out until they got back to the moonbase and destroyed the sash.

Now, with the Director finally bringing up her concern, Hecuba was fairly certain that this was the part where she got fired.

“It worked out fine, though,” Julia noted. “Like, with teamwork and junk.”

“You were very lucky only one of you fell under the thrall,” responded the Director. “Lup, as powerful as you are—or as strong as you are, Julia, would you have been able to take down two of your teammates in a serious battle for the relic?”

“I _am_ very strong.”

“Yes, sure, fine, but you won’t be able to surprise two members. You’re the same level, um. If you were to classify power into levels, I suppose.  Even you wouldn’t be able to take out two thirds of your team.”

"Lup hasn't had any problems with the thrall," Julia protested.

"Yeah, I think I could take these two chucklefucks," added Lup.

"And you?" the Director asked, raising an eyebrow at Julia. "Have  _you_ had any 'problems with the thrall'?"

"Welllllllll... not any permanent ones!" 

The Director sighed. "Lup is the only one of you who has been mostly immune. And honestly? I can't see any solution to this. It's looking grim, girls." 

For a moment, there was silence.

"Hey, have _you_ ever been thralled?"

“...No. But I think you're maybe starting to go down Bad Idea Avenue.”

“But wouldn't it be nice iiiiffffff,” Julia drawled, “we had another party member so me and Hec wouldn’t always come into direct contact with the relics?” The human grinned. “Or… someone who knows the relics more than anyone else but hasn’t succumbed to the thrall.”

“Oh, yeah,” Hecuba said, breaking her long silence. “We really can’t keep doing this with just three of us. We're pretty useless except for Lup here, I'd say.”

Lup laughed sharply and leaned in towards the Director, who was at that point beginning to look wary. “Hmmmm, yeah, okay, I think we all know what this is leading up to. Madam Director, you’ve been working with the relics for a while now, huh! You and Davenport get pretty close to them _preeeeeeetty_ often and you seem fine. And I can’t help notice that you are, in fact, a magic-user.”

“I,” the Director began, looking suddenly like a deer in fantasy headlights, “I am—I am very old and wise. You might say I have a high wisdom, uh, skill, if you will, and it helps, um, save me from the thrall. You could call it a wisdom save, if you, uh... no, sorry, I really hope you’re not trying to insinuate what I think you are.”

“I _think_ what we’re going for,” Julia said, “is that… maybe you could leave Davenport in charge once in a while and come help us? He can run stuff in absentia, and no offense to him, but I don't know if he even knows how to fight or like, adventure.”

“And we’re the fucking boner squad and can get all the help we can get,” Lup finished for her. “We can always use another competent woman to save our asses.”

“I was afraid of this,” said Lucretia. “I—I am your boss, you know? And in charge of all of the operations here, more than Davenport knows how to organize. You must realize there are reasons why that would be just, a very very bad idea. You're plenty capable.”

“You’re really overestimating us,” Lup said with a grin. “Give it a test run, boss lady. Humor us.”

(Simultaneously, someone on the Plane of Thought rolled a Natural 20 on Persuasion.)

Lucretia sighed once more and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Promise to never call me that again and I’ll consider it.”

* * *

 

(It turned out, later, that a rapidly crystallizing lab is much easier to navigate when you’re with one of its original architects, but Hecuba couldn’t shake the feeling that now all three of them were way underqualified for their positions. Well, she was their boss for a reason, she guessed.)

(Even later, in a newly-restored temple, Lucretia was the only one of them not given a gift by Istus, only reassurance that her decisions were very important, and that she should perhaps rely on her friends in her moments of need.)

* * *

Wonderland was where all hell broke loose.

It was awkward enough with Cam and Lucretia’s awkward but heartfelt reunion; Lucretia apologized, of course, for leaving him, despite her really still thinking it was the right choice. Cam was slightly mollified by that and the tension between them had eventually given way to jokes about the old gang getting back together. It was only later on when things started to get… messy.

Lucretia was distracted by a spell of hers—something sixth level, and Lup was slightly suspicious because she was _fairly_ certain that a supposedly twelfth-level wizard would have long run out of sixth level spell slots with the rate at which Lucretia had been casting them—when the Red Robe made his first appearance to the other three women. Lup had seen him once or twice before in Wonderland, though she hadn’t told the others because like _hell_ she was going to trust some undead creep just because he saved her from dying one time.

“Please,” the Red Robe whispered to the three of them,” I don’t think Lucretia will trust me. But you three need to. I’m trying to help, even if she doesn’t want us talking to each other. There’s a lot of, um, general lich magic stuff going on here in this place that I’m trying to figure out.”

“Yeah, okay, sounds good,” Julia replied, only half joking. “It’s worth a shot.”

And it was the lich, in the end, that got them to the Animus Bell, and Lucretia only shot them all betrayed glances until a bright light shot out of Lup’s back only ten minutes later.

Hecuba immediately made a move to help, but before she could even think of a spell, swirls of red cloud condensed behind Lup’s possessed body.

From the cloud came a flicker of light, a spark, and an explosion of flame; it filled the room, licking the edges of the other women’s clothes but not burning, but consuming the liches whole in a gruesome spectacle. Hecuba and Julia were taken aback, unsure of what was happening and more than slightly disconcerted when Lucretia looked as if she was going to start crying from fear.

Julia thought she might start crying herself when she heard a familiarly lilting voice cry out through the overwhelming crackling of flames.

“ _Lucretia, what the fuck?"_

When Julia looked to Lucretia again, she was gone.

When they finally left Wonderland, they were down two party members and plus two Red Robes. The original Red Robe they had met was fine enough, but Julia got a headache and static in her brain when she tried to look at the new one and missed Lup desperately. She was secretly glad that she wouldn’t be going to the moonbase due to the anti-lich wards. Plus, as Hecuba put it, the two liches would never get anything done if they didn't stop  _canoodling_.

* * *

The group was pleasantly surprised to find out that Lucretia hadn’t yet told Avi not to send them a retrieval cannonball, which was fortunate because the Red-Robe-turned-human had absolutely no contingency plan in place. (Actually, she had given orders, but Avi wasn't about to let go of a chance to ask his dear friends _why the hell are you banned from the moonbase but the Regulators aren't after_ _you_ , and Julia  _did_ apologize before knocking him out.)Barry's plan worked, for the most part, with assistance from Angus at Julia’s behest, who managed to distract the Director while she quickly “destroyed” the Animus Bell. There was no journey to Fantasy Costco, no discovery of a body in a tank; a clone of Julia wouldn't do much good anyway, though the technology would come in handy for Lup after everything calmed down.

The taste of ichor was still vile when they drank, and with the urgency with which the Red Robes had insisted on drinking it, the two had pretty much expected some of big reveal: some hidden secret they always knew, something in their past that was suddenly explained. It was a shock, then, to find that Julia and Hecuba didn’t feel different at all. Except they could see a baby voidfish. And except…

Except the Red Robe they had left planetside was _Lup_.

Except that Lup was fine and she was a lich and apparently she and the other lich were a _thing_?

Huh.

* * *

Somewhere between the finding out that Lucretia had basically ruined Davenport and his (now mostly dead or undead) friends’ lives, the desperate search for the Director, and beating up shadow monsters, Hecuba and Julia gathered the following:

  1. The Hunger had devoured countless planes before this one.
  2. Lucretia’s shield plan was a very bad idea.
  3. It was up to them to fix shit, as usual.
  4. Their respective husbands were fucking aliens. (And uh, by extension, Julia and Hecuba had been fucking aliens in a different way. Hot???)
  5. Their respective husbands were also going to stop being dead when ( _if_ ) this world was consumed.
  6. ( _Magnus would be alive again, and he was always a fan of heroic sacrifices_.)
  7. ( _Magnus would absolutely hate the idea of Julia dying for his sake._ )
  8. Lup’s dead-and-formerly-forgotten twin would be alive again, which was an entirely different story.
  9. Lup, who showed up once the wards were destroyed, would double-kill Julia and Hecuba if they died.
  10. They were going to save the g-ddamn world.



And they were right.

 

* * *

 

 

Kravitz hung around after the final battle so the women could explain the lich situation to him, which took nearly an hour of negotiation mixed with questions about the Astral Plane (" _Magnus told me to say he loves you too and misses you but he can still wait another fifty years to see you, so don't be too reckless_ ") before the Reaper's Stone of Farspeech crackled to life. Kravitz was in the middle of offering Lup and Barry the position of Reapers (and, twenty feet away, Lucretia and Davenport were still sitting next to each other in a heated argument that Lup was considering joining) when a voice from it called, " _Krav, babe, you've been gone forever and I know you're probably doing some fate of the universe shit right now, but I'm taking a fucking break and popping by for a sec, 'kay? Love you, see you soon_."

"So," Lup said when the Mysterious Caller arrived, tears in her eyes despite her grin and crossed arms, "you're dating the  _Grim Reaper_?"

"Holy shit," the Mysterious Caller said back. "Hey Krav, did I ever tell you about my sister?"

"Only every day," Kravitz fondly chuckled. "I wanted to have a surprise party for you, but that's a non-starter now, I guess."

"Krav. Kravitz. Rabbit," the elf (named Taako, Julia was fairly certain) cooed, planting a peck on the Reaper's face with each word. "You fools just saved the world and, more importantly, my fucking sister is here and _remembers me_? We are abso-fucking-lutely still having a party." He glanced at the human fighter as if assessing her and flashed a sly, catlike grin. "And if this is the Julia that Mags always has pictures of, screw the ghost rules, he's coming too."

**Author's Note:**

> IDK if this will ever end up as a proper story but I really like the idea of a version of the THG AU where instead of being three girls predestined for greatness, they're just Lup and two random women who accidentally got sucked into saving the world when Lucretia came to visit their towns and asked where their (by then deceased or missing) husbands were.
> 
> Taako died while looking for Lup, Magnus died in Raven's Roost from the bombing, and Merle... tbh, I think Merle just died because he didn't take care of his body well, especially after he and Hecuba had a falling-out, and it ended up just giving out one day while he was out adventuring and some random encounter monster got lucky. Or he's still alive out there! It's a mystery.
> 
> Taako was in the Sea of Souls but was such a persistent asshole that he managed to get out and tried to sneak into the Stockade, thinking that Lup might be in there. He got caught and Kravitz wasn't really sure what to do since no one has wanted to get into the Stockade before, and what could he do as a punishment? Put him in there for real? In the end Taako was returned to the Sea but he just kept getting out to ask Kravitz if he'd seen his sister and hypothetically, if there was a lich, what would happen to her? Hypothetically, would liches from other planar systems that don't have the Raven Queen in them still be in his legal jurisdiction, maybe they should be diplomatically immune???


End file.
